Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Hamas v. Israel...not a confined skirmish, not even a proxy war...but the beginning of an all-out struggle to preserve western culture, history and future

Anyone who may have been holding out hope that the Israel-Hamas war is confined to the two warring parties must now be disabused of his naivety, following the most revered and most powerful leader in Iran, Ayatollah Komeini's appearance on Iranian television yesterday openly recruiting Muslims from around the world to join Hamas in the fight against Israel. Just this weekend, the official leader of Hamas, when asked by Charlie Rose in a PBS interview if he and his group would accept a two-state solution and live in peace with the state of Israel, replied in the negative: "We will not live in peace with occupiers!" was his adamantine and final answer.
Can there be any doubt that Israel is in an existential war, a fight for her literal survival in what could easily devolve into an all-out conflict with the many anti-Semitic, Islamic terrorists now operating in the Middle East, under a variety of names, guises and banners, all of them still hiding behind their signature "masks" never daring to declare their personal identity, hiding behind the shield of their ideology? Immediately after 9/11, few people living in the west were familiar with Al Qaeda, and the nuanced differences between Sunni and Shia. The last dozen years + have given us ample evidence, and opportunity, to discern that, deep down, Islamic jihad is united in its pursuit of the eradication of the state of Israel, and that jihad includes all stripes of Islam from all corners of the globe.
Iran's leader is not only calling for recruits from around the globe, while protests among Islamists in major world capitals are growing in world capitals, she is openly and brazenly providing weapons, intelligence and support for the Hamas thugs. As sanctions against Putin and the Kremlin for the brazen take-over of Crimea and the equally brazen downing of the Malaysian airline, MH17, and the even more brazen restriction of international observers and investigators from access to the crash site, and the nose-thumbing and public decisions of the BRICS, Putin will be even more interested in allying with Iran in her provision of arms to both Hamas and Hezbollah, as he joins in what could easily and responsibly be considered a joint attempt at confusion, obfuscation, violence and the pursuit of a new world order, including not only new Islamic states in Syria, Iraq, and several hot-spots in Africa, but more importantly the removal of Israel from the planet.
And let's not kid ourselves, those opposed to the continuing existence of Israel will use whatever words, arguments, characterizations and deceptions to propagandize their efforts. Calling Israel an "occupier" or the "new apartheid" or "prosecutor, judge, jury and prison warden" in Gaza and the West Bank, the "Siamese cousin" of the United States, also dubbed the Satan of the world by the same forces who seek Israel's eradication.
Let's take the 'kid gloves' off our language and our perception of the importance and the dangers implicit in the Israeli-Hamas war. Of course, dozens of innocents, now well over 1000 on the Gaza side, are being killed as we pound these keys. just this morning another UN school, supposedly a refuge for fleeing citizens of Gaza, was struck, allegedly by Israeli missiles or rockets (who really cares about the differences?) yet Hamas continues to rebuff even attempts by the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas for a negotiated cease-fire, a pause to the killing, and time for a moment of both reflection and restoration of needed humanitarian supplies including medical supplies.

While not being privy to any of the intelligence to which Harper, Obama, Cameron and Holland and Merkel have access, and not being educated in foreign policy as people like Madelaine Albright and Condolesa Rice and schooled through experience as people like Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, we are nevertheless, appalled at the situation which currently confronts all people of the planet. Illegitimate, non-state actors threaten the legitimate and legal and even economic and political order which have taken centuries to construct. Theirs is a campaign of what could be termed "epic post-modernism" or "epic-deconstructionism"....and not in the intellectual meaning of those words, but in the geopolitical scope of those words. Theirs is an all-out assault on the way the world has evolved over the last two thousand years, especially an assault on the institutions that conceived, gestated and delivered democracy, human rights, the rule of law, access to education and opportunity for all, freedom from religious persecution for all faiths and for those with no faith, gender equality, respect and even honouring of diversity, and yes, modernity, including the less attractive and less 'moral' aspects of western culture that include such black marks as prostitution, child pregnancies, alcoholism and drug dependency, the largest military establishment in history. However, just as their "reading" of the Koran is both narrow and misguided in the extreme, so too is their "reading" of the health and the value of western civilization reductionistic, insultingly so, simplistic, embarrassingly so to themselves, and arbitrary. Their compulsive obsession with the 'sins' of the west, and they are openly displayed every day in every newspaper and on every television screen for the world to watch and to scorn, demonstrates an extreme reductionism in the relationship between a deity and the human race. Inflexibility, extreme self-righteousness to the point of insanity and violent elimination of anything and anyone who disagrees or opposes, in short a perfectionism that is supposed to honour a commitment to the deity that includes martyrdom, through the force of whatever arms are available (and this danger is growing as loose nukes, discarded American weapons by the hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan, unleashed missiles and rockets from failed states like Lybia, and increasing access to countries like Iran willing to openly supply the terrorists make their way into the hands of the Islamic terrorists)...these are not only signs of serious instability, but also signs of serious danger. The danger to themselves is not an issue for the perpetrators; they believe their are going to a "heavenly reward" for their efforts. However, the danger, not only to Israel, but to the rest of the world is threatened. And that includes:

the freedom to worship in all countries as one chooses,

the freedom to access a complete education (based on ability) in all countries for all children

the freedom to trust one's human rights will be respected in all countries,

the freedom to contest the abuse of power through sanctioned, open, transparent and accountable legal systems,

the access to the protection of stable governments premised on the equality and dignity and respect for all of its citizens through access to instruments of selection available to all (the right to vote, and the right to have all votes counted equally, without contamination, bribery, or illicit interference)

the specific human rights of all women, for which much ink and even more blood has been spilled over the centuries

So let's not hide our heads, nor our hearts, not our minds and consciences in the sand, especially right now. This current geopolitical "climate" forecast contains threats of very large and very dangerous political and human storms, for which we are all wondering if the world is even as prepared as it is (isn't) for global warming and climate change. Israel may have been God's chosen, in the Old Testament, but her people are now on the front lines of what can and must be seen as a much larger conflict from which none of us is exempt, immune or excluded.
In this battle, the "free world" (even with all of its admitted blemishes, warts, cancers and brokenness) must consider itself aligned with Israel; we might even want to go so far as to acknowledge that "we are all Jews" in the fight to preserve a way of life, a culture and a future over which we do not relinquish our opportunity to guide its direction. And, that means recruiting all the best minds, hearts spirits and bodies in a conflict whose end today cannot be envisaged...the Islamic terrorists really have given us no other choice, just as Hamas has given Israel's IDF (Israeli Defence Force) no other choice but to kill innocent children and women.